“Estimable are they?”
“You do not find them so?”
“One is as insipid as milk, the other I suspect of not being a gentleman.”
“Hmm. Is your opinion reliable, do you think?”
“It is not colored by jealousy, if that is what you mean.”
“Oh, certainly not! Whatever you say, I know you to be totally consumed by your love for the perfect Lady Sarah. Which is why you should not kiss me.”
Her words acted upon him like a taunt. Rational thought fled and, still holding her in his arms, he brought his head down and touched her mouth with his own.
The act transcended his fantasies. Her full lips were velvety and responsive, setting him instantly alight. Soon they were nearly gasping, kissing one another as though feasting after famine. Running his hands through her long, silky hair, Ned knew a strange feeling of inevitability. Neither he nor Caro seemed to be able to get enough of each other. From where had this hunger sprung?
He not only wanted her physical self, he wanted that elusive spirit of hers—her good heart, her contrariness, whatever it was that made her eyes shine when she looked on the youngsters performing her play. All previous resolutions fled. Wherever this woman was, that was where he belonged. Losing himself in this knowledge, he gave as full a rein to his desire as he dared. He leaned her back over his arm as he kissed her throat down to the tempting flesh above her bodice.
“I think you have surely ousted the Lady Sarah from my heart, Caro,” he murmured, as that organ pounded with this realization. “In fact, I now find myself doubting whether she was ever there at all. Certainly never like this.” He touched his lips to her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, her cheekbones, and finally the end of her nose, his hands roaming her back through the thick skeins of her hair.
“Undoubtedly, it was my billiards game,” she said. “Does Lady Sarah not play?” Standing on tiptoe, she reached up and initiated another fervent kiss that inflamed him almost past bearing. He nearly forgot the several hundred people making merry only a short distance away.
When she pulled her lips away from him, she set her cheek against his shoulder, holding on to his lapels with both hands.
He said, “I shall speak to your father tomorrow.”
“About what?” she asked, her voice playful as she kissed the underside of his chin.
Taking her by the shoulders, he held her away from him and looked into the moonlight-touched face before him. Her lips were quirked up on one side in a mischievous half-smile. “I love you madly, you little wretch. Surely, I have for some time. Obviously, we must have a very short engagement, if I am to hang on to my sanity and you to your virtue. Do you still detest me for my bad manners?”
“That depends. Do you have an obligation to Lady Sarah?”
“She dismissed me, remember? Thank heavens. I must have been temporarily addled.”
They shared another kiss, and Ned realized that he had been fighting his attraction for this woman since they had first met in London. He said, “I want you to know that I have never felt for another woman what I feel for you. Never.”
“Surely you were attracted to Lady Sarah!”
He grinned.
“I do believe you were always in my mind, tormenting me. That must be why I have treated you so abominably.”
“Yes, well, that will have to stop.”
“You do not find it part of my charm?”
Another punch to his chest. “Shall we return to the party before my reputation is altogether in shreds?”
After another thoroughly rousing kiss, Ned thought it best that they return decorously to the bonfire. All had come right in his world.
* * *
He lay awake for much of the night, contemplating all the delights in store for him with this entirely unexpected turn of events, but arose betimes the following morning, anxious to have his word with Lord Jonathan. Over breakfast, Cumming brought him a small stack of letters, apparently forwarded from Cornwall to the orphanage, where he had just missed them. His headmaster had sent them on to Jack’s. There was a letter from his mother, the dowager duchess, as well. Reading that first, he was pleasantly lost in thoughts of how she would approve his choice of bride. Then he took up another letter in a female hand he did not recognize.
Your Grace,
You do not know me, but I am an intimate friend of your cast-off fiancée, Lady Sarah Randolph. I am giving you a chance to make things right before I broadcast your despicable behavior to all and sundry. Have you not guessed why Lady Sarah has hidden herself at her brother’s estate? I have just come from there and was shocked to find that my poor, dear friend is increasing! I always thought you a gentleman. How you could seduce and desert a woman of such quality as Lady Sarah is beyond the comprehension of any decent human being. You, sir, are a monster!
Lady Irene Bridges, Viscountess Salterton
Ned crumpled the letter in his fist and looked around him as through a haze. Everything seemed foreign, as it did when one woke in the middle of a nightmare. Lady Sarah increasing! What kind of imbroglio had she gotten into? Standing up, he paced the room, restless as a savage. He straightened the letter out and read it over again. It still seemed utterly preposterous. He could never become engaged to Caro with this scandal hanging over them.
Crumpling it once more into a tight ball, he threw it into the empty grate. Ned was conscious of only one thing: he must get to Lady Sarah immediately to discover what the truth of the matter might be. Had the viscountess assumed the situation or had she been told these “facts” by Lady Sarah herself?
Was the woman with whom he had thought himself in love so duplicitous? How could it be so? She had broken off the engagement. She had refused to see him.
Walking by rote out of the house to the stables, he saddled his horse himself with single intent. He rode off, leaving his carriage with all his belongings. So red and blinding was his anger, it never occurred to him to say good-bye.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS BESIEGED
When Caro woke the morning after the fête, she stretched herself between her sheets, her arms above her head. The clock told her that it was mid-morning, and sunlight streaming through the crack in her draperies foretold another sunny day. Memories of Ned’s kisses sweetened the first moments of her wakefulness. Today, she was to become betrothed to the man with whom she had secretly fallen in love months ago. Best of all, it would seem that the woman he loved was not the noted beauty he had courted in London, but her real self—the woman she was when she dwelt in her real world.
Dressing with particular care in a spring green muslin day gown, she sprayed herself with her vanilla scent and instructed her maid to dress her hair half up, with the remainder curled and falling down her back. A girlish, unfashionable style, but she could still feel Ned’s hands lost in her hair and suspected that he loved to see it that way.
Her father was taking coffee, bacon, and eggs when she arrived in the round breakfast parlor. The windows were thrown open, and Caro observed hummingbirds in the flower garden, gathering nectar.
“Papa, I have excellent news!”
He looked up from his plate. “My dear, you look in prime twig. Is that young vicar to come calling on me this morning?”
She grinned at him. “I do not believe so, sir. But with your consent, I am to be married.”
“Not that rascal, Lord Harry!”
“Wrong again!”
“Well, you have me mystified, Caro! Out with it!”
“The Duke of Beverley, Papa. He told me that he would call on you this morning.”
Her father’s jaw dropped open. “My dear girl! You surprise me. How did this come about?”
“It has been coming about for quite some time, actually.”
“Never tell me he was the one you were hankering after in London?”
“The very one.”
“Well, well. I am deuced glad that he finally came up to scratch!”
> “Tell him that, will you?”
“Caro! He’s a duke of the realm! I am only the son of an earl. I would not dare.”
“Oh, he is not at all high in the instep. Just think of him as being Jack’s particular friend since boyhood.”
“Does your mother know?”
“You are the first person I have told, Papa.” She had been engaged in selecting for herself a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast, and jam, which she now sat down to enjoy.
Her father grasped the bell pull. When the footman entered, he instructed him to find Lady Jonathan in her stillroom and bid her join them.
Upon hearing the news, Caro’s mother fell into an even greater ecstasy than Caro could have predicted. Collapsing in a chair, her hand fluttering about as she grasped her lace handkerchief, she said, “Oh, my daughter is to be a duchess! I never dared to hope! But I must say, I did dare to hope! Oh, my love!”
“Margaret, of course it is all very gratifying to see our daughter so well settled, but is it not even more wonderful that this man loves her and will treat her well?”
“Of course, of course. Only just think! A duchess!”
“He is to call on Papa this morning, Mama. So do not say anything, even to the servants, until their meeting is concluded and all is arranged.”
“Of course not!” Her mother looked affronted. Nevertheless, when she left the breakfast room, both Caro and her father could hear her trill for her maid, “Matty, Matty, where are you? Such news!”
In the event, it was as well that Caro had prepared her father, for shortly after they had arisen from the breakfast table and adjourned together to the library, Lord William was announced for his lordship. She looked at her father. “Do not say anything about Ned, er, his grace, Papa!”
“Well, what am I to say?”
“Anything but yes!”
She left the library, hoping that the vicar was not about in the hall. Fortunately, Hitchens seemed to have put him in the downstairs parlor, so she was able to climb upstairs unseen. Once in her bedroom, she sat in the periwinkle chintz-flowered chair by the window and looked across the fields to where Northbrooke Hall sprawled in its valley. Confound it, Ned! Wake up!
Resting her head on the chair back, she touched her lips with her fingers and fell to dreaming of Ned’s inflammatory kisses. Despite her successful season, she had never been kissed before. She had never felt this delicious honey-sweetness in her breast—the knowledge that she was loved and that she loved in return. Caro felt completed, whole, fulfilled.
Through the open window, she heard the vague sound of a horse proceeding away from the house. Lord William. Rousing herself, she descended to speak with her father.
“I hated to disappoint the poor young man,” he told Caro.
“So what did you say, Papa?”
“I told him that I thought your affections were otherwise engaged.”
“Oh, well done! And it has the virtue of being the truth.”
“Yes. What do you imagine is keeping your noble suitor? If he is not sharp, that young man will put his luck to the test again.”
“Perhaps Beverley was up all night with Jack and is still abed.”
At that moment, they heard the knocker against on the front door.
“Here he is!” Caro said. She picked up her skirts, exited the library, and once more took to the stairs before Hitchens could open the door.
Waiting in her room, she tried to calm her racing heartbeat. How soon would they be able to be married? She would never have to do another season as an unmarried woman. What would Ned’s seat in Cornwall be like? How would she get on with his mother? Caro devoutly hoped that the soon-to-be dowager duchess would be nothing like Jack’s mother. It had taken someone as self-assured as Kate to stand up to Serena Bailey-Wintersham, dowager marchioness of Northbrooke.
After a time, she was surprised to hear another horse making off in the direction of Northbrooke. Had Ned not stopped long enough to see her, then? That was surely odd. Looking out her window, she was frustrated by the trees overhanging the road. She could not see Ned, only his horse’s legs.
Slowly, she opened the door to her room. Feeling deflated, she descended the stairway and went to the library.
“I certainly hope your duke gets out of bed soon,” her father said. “I have had to turn away two hopeful suitors this morning.”
“Two? Then that was not Beverley?”
“No. It was that insolent pup, Lord Harry. I did not mind telling him that you had received another offer. He probably thinks you have accepted his brother, and I did not enlighten him.”
“Oh.” Caro exhaled, frustrated as she collapsed in a very unladylike manner into a leather wing chair. “Where is the duke? This is not amusing, Papa, though I must say it does somewhat resemble a farce.”
“You are a very desirable parti, my dear. Just in case you ever doubted it.”
“Beverley is staying in the same house with the Cleaverings. Unless he is unconscious, I have no idea how he cannot know what they have been up to. What is keeping him? The morning is proceeding apace.”
“I do not like to see you in such fidgets, my dear. Perhaps you have some morning visits to make?”
Caro pulled herself away from the back of the chair and sat up straight. “Yes. I intended to call on the women who helped me with the fête this morning. I have gifts for them. Raspberry preserves from our kitchens.”
“Well, suppose you do that. When the duke comes, I will be happy to tell him that you have gone about your business and that I do not know when you will return.”
“That is an excellent idea, Papa. I only hope that Mattie has restrained herself from spreading my news about the neighborhood.”
“I hope the same.” Standing, he walked around his desk and kissed her on the cheek. “Now, go get your bonnet and gloves and be off.”
Caro drove herself in the gig, the pots of jam in a basket. The visits proved a perfect diversion. Each of the four ladies she visited was carried away with memories of the day before and how smoothly everything had run, and how happy the dear children had been. More than one acknowledged the great help that Lord William had brought to their cause. Lady Stanfield even asked if they could expect an interesting announcement soon. Caro colored, but did not reply, except to say, “I have no idea to what you are referring.”
Drat Ned anyway!
When she returned home, Hitchens said nothing about the duke but informed her that the marchioness of Northbrooke had called and was awaiting her upstairs in the morning room. Her annoyance with the duke grew. Removing her bonnet and gloves, she handed them to the butler and made her way upstairs.
Kate rose from the lemon-colored sofa, where she had been perusing the latest edition of La Belle Assemblee. “Darling Caro! Your papa tells me you have already been out to thank your helpers for the fête yesterday. I came to thank you. The dowager and Jack both assure me that yesterday’s was the finest fête the parish has seen in their lifetimes.”
“Well, you know how much I love that sort of thing. I shall miss it.” Then, realizing what she had said, she put her hand over her mouth.
“Miss it? Of what are you speaking, Caro?” Kate was obviously puzzled. So Ned had not confided in Jack. Or if he had, Jack had not confided in Kate.
“Let us sit,” Caro said. She joined her friend on the sofa and took her hands. “I know that Ned would not mind my telling you.”
Kate’s brow creased and her eyes looked a question.
“He is going to offer for me.” Caro knew she was smiling from one ear to the other.
“Offer for you?” Kate echoed, her voice incredulous.
“Is that such a surprise?”
“Well, yes. Considering he has disappeared and no one knows where he has gone. He left his carriage and all his things. Just took off on his horse. No word to the servants. No note.”
Caro’s heart gave a dull thud. “Jack does not know where he has gone?”
“No. Nor w
hen he plans to return.”
Her heart sinking, Caro said in a small voice, “How frightfully odd. He told me last night he intended to call upon Papa this morning.”
“I wonder if he said something to Jack last night. They played billiards together after the fête.”
“It would have been the natural thing for him to do, do you not think so?”
“You must come to luncheon. Get your bonnet. I came in the curricle.”
Caro hesitated. “I do not wish to be seen by your cousins today.”
“Oh. And why is that?”
“They have both offered for me this morning. Papa as much as told them that I had another offer.”
“It seems all your goodness and loveliness has not gone unnoticed. Three offers!”
“I would not mind seeing them if all were settled with Beverley, but I do not want them to even guess anything prematurely.”
“Never mind. I just remembered. They have gone with their father on an expedition to Town.”
“To London?”
“Yes. They will probably have left by this time. They want to buy a couple of broodmares to breed with Apollo, Jack’s stud. The one I gave him for a wedding present.”
“That’s all right, then.”
“Yes. Come for luncheon. Jack will be happy to hear your news if he does not know it as yet.”
“But, Kate, Ned’s queer behavior does seem to indicate a change of intent.”
“Rubbish! Jack found a pile of unopened mail from Cornwall by his untouched breakfast. His steward must have written of something that required his urgent attention.”
“But, if that is so, why did he not stop to leave me a note? Why did he not leave you one?”
“It will all sort itself out. You will see.”
* * *
Jack met them at the luncheon table. He did not join in their chatter as they were served by the footman. His face was drawn. His welcome to Caro consisted only of a single darting glance and a falsely hearty hello.
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